Oliver Sherman: A soldier comes home, seven lost years later

Kaelan Meuiner (left) and Garret Dillahunt in a scene from "Oliver Sherman"

A trio of strong performances provide the main interest in the film Oliver Sherman, a first-time feature from Canada's Ryan Redford, adapted from the story Veterans by London-based American writer Rachel Ingalls. Hampered by an overdeliberate pace and didactic intentions, this spare drama about the aftermath of war goes only so far on the strength of its sincerity, carefulness and good intentions.

Seven years after being discharged from the army, a man (Garret Dillahunt), still wearing his close-cropped hair, split by a meandering scar, shows up at the rural home of his old buddy, Franklin (Donal Logue). Franklin, who has a job at the local mill, is now a married man with a wife, Irene (Molly Parker), and two kids, a four-year-old boy and a baby girl.

His real name is Sherman Oliver. Years ago, Franklin saved his life on the battlefield. When Sherman was recovering in hospital from a head wound, he lost his sense of identity and reversed his name. For the audiences, that double forename is a clue that he represents a universal soldier: One part Oliver Cromwell, one part William Tecumseh Sherman, conquerors from the English and American civil wars.

In this contemporary world, though, he's a social misfit, like a sick dog you would cross the street to avoid. Franklin, who feels responsible for him, wants to help. His wife, Irene (Molly Parker), is creeped out by Sherman's behaviour and his clear envy of Franklin's good life. Franklin, now a shaggy hippie dad, just wants to get along with everyone. Each day he takes Sherman to the town library - where he immerses himself in war books - and takes him out drinking every night.

Once the predicament has been established, the movie loses momentum. For a while, it begins to resemble a half-hearted home-invasion thriller. Sherman comes home in midday and scares Irene; another time, he peeks at Irene's breast while she's nursing the baby. He gives a four-year-old a knife to play with, and breaks out into a cursing fit in front of guests. We get it. He's unstable, and eventually Franklin and Irene will catch up to what the audience already knows is coming.

You can't fault the cast. Dillahunt ( Deadwood, No Country for Old Men, Winter's Bone) is outstanding, always an uncomfortable beat wrong in his social cues, with his lip twisting as if words have a bad taste for him. Logue, for his part, does a credible job as a man haunted by his good deed, and the possibility that he did Sherman no great favour by saving his life.

Parker's role is the trickiest because the actress seems too smart and sympathetic for the words her character utters. Irene says Sherman should move on, that he's lazy, but her trite sentiments feel like an artifact of the original story's post-Korean war setting. For a contemporary audience, the size of the scar on Sherman's head is all we need to know that moving on won't be that easy.

Oliver Sherman